


Fire and Blood

by sky_blue_hightops



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (canon death seeing as its the apocalypse), Angst, Apocalypse, Character Death, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Loneliness, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Sickfic, Whump, a lot of crying tbh, again kinda, i would cry too if i had to go thru what five did, sorry - Freeform, well more along the lines of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 18:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_blue_hightops/pseuds/sky_blue_hightops
Summary: Five's time after the apocalypse.





	Fire and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> choo choo all aboard the angst train

The wind howled.

The wind howled and the fires devoured and the smoke suffocated and the sky fell.

Or, that's how the crushing pressure in his lungs felt, the pressure that didn't let him breathe, the tears that stung in his eyes that didn't let him see, the ash coating his fingers that didn't let him feel. His pain was numb and ragged like an exposed nerve, his heartbeat in time with his own stuttered, horrified breathing - his fingers, dirty and shaking, brushing cool, cool skin -

He let his thumb press briefly into the black ink tattoo on his brother's wrist. The skin was still soft. Dried blood painted tracks down his brother's forehead. It flaked off under his touch.

He threw up into the rubble nearby.

***

It took six days to bury them.

One of those days was spent finding a shovel. The next day was spent dragging their bodies to a clear patch of land, closing his eyes and breathing through his nose. The third day was spent pressed under an overhang created by a whole, collapsed wall propped up by rubble, crying, wiping his tears with dusty, bloody-raw hands, begging to just stop  _hurting_. 

The fourth day, he didn't remember. He didn't want to remember.

(He remembered flashes, when he finally felt safe enough to dig up the memories he had previously left to the ghosts. He remembered flashes of anger. Fear. Of blood, splattered in red-white relief with the endless stretch of concrete in every direction, pooling in his palms, warm. The only warmth he had, after the apocalypse, was from fire or blood.

So that's how he learned to love. By fire and blood.)

The fifth day was digging. Shovel after shovel of dirt and dust, picking past street-sign posts and rebar. Five graves, he counted. 

The apocalypse had taken everything from him, it seemed. Even his name.

The sixth day, he didn't dare breathe a word. The wind quieted to a whistle. The loudest sound he heard the whole day was the thud of bodies in graves. The sound of the shovel biting through dirt.

The loudest sound he didn't hear that day was everything he had ever wanted to say to his siblings.

The words, he buried with them.

***

He should've seen it coming. He hadn't had food in days, and water was scarce. He was weak. 

Sleep was impossible. The first six days had painted the faces of his dead siblings on the insides of his eyelids. The first six nights had filled his unconscious mind with all the ways they could've died. His hands itched, but he had scratched all the blood off so harshly his own blood seeped through tiny tears in his skin.

He should've seen it coming, but when he woke on the thirty-sixth day of the end of the world to a pounding head and the urge to gouge his own eyes out because light  _hurt_ he was still surprised.

He didn't move from his spot under the overhang for six hours, throat burning from wanting to cry but his head in too much pain to risk the shuddering, gasping sobs he knew were bubbling up in his lungs. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, swallowed thickly, and did his best to take steady, shallow breaths. He didn't move.

The day faded to evening. His mouth was so dry, like he hadn't had water in years. He wanted nothing more than to get to his feet and seek out another clean water source. He wanted nothing more than to get to his feet and start walking and never stop or turn around. He wanted nothing more than to forget everything from the past weeks, he wanted nothing more than to see his siblings again, he wanted nothing more than Klaus's laugh or Allison's smile or the warmth of Vanya's hand in his or the press of Ben's shoulder against his or Luther's hand ruffling his hair gently or Diego's hugs-

He didn't move.

The sun set. He didn't move.

The moon rose. He didn't move. His breath stuttered, once. His vision went dark from the pain.

He became afraid of dying the first time Dad had put him through a training session, when his breath was metallic with blood and his lungs ached with overuse and his muscles trembled.

He didn't move. The sun rose. His head felt as if it would split in two.

That was the moment he became afraid of dying _alone_.

***

Vanya's book was well-written, in his opinion. An enthralling read, as it were.

He only read two paragraphs before his eyes welled up so thickly with tears he couldn't make out the dull beige of the pages in his hands.

He closed the book. He didn't touch it for eleven days.

***

His trips from their - his - neighborhood were few and far between. He only did it when he was desperate. For food, water, to escape the air of death that hovered over his siblings' graves.

Never before had he wanted Klaus's power more. Klaus had always insisted his power was a curse he'd never wish on anyone, ever, at all.

Five wondered if the apocalypse counted as extenuating circumstances.

Five wondered if they could still see him.

***

The old antiques shop on the corner, a place he had visited maybe twice from morbid curiosity, stood shaven almost cleanly in half. Its rubble poked upwards from the ground like the rib-cage of some great creature long past. Five crawled through its corpse, gutted its carcass, picked its bones clean. 

He returned to his little hideaway one record player and two bleeding scrapes richer.

The vinyl already in place on the player's surface was scuffed, but unharmed. Five counted his blessings, checked for a label he couldn't find, shrugged, and started the song.

The notes that warbled from it-

He threw the record player. It crashed into the side of the building near him, broke into six or seven pieces, clattered to the ground. The music stopped.

He cried himself to sleep that night, like any other night. But this night was different. No one died in his dreams, this night. But the sweet images of his siblings dancing to that catchy,  _stupid_ song hurt far more than any blood-soaked dreams ever could.

***

~~He woke, in the middle of the night. He could still hear the music in his head. He crawled out from under the overhang, shivered in the bite of the cold, and danced under the stars. His feet were heavy, his arms clumsy, and he couldn't tell if that painful, broken thing in the center of his chest broke even further, or finally started to heal.~~

~~The broken shards of the record player mocked him. He cried even more when he realized he couldn't play the song ever again.~~

***

He opened Vanya's book, again. The pages were still white, save the edges. Clean. Untouched.

He brushed his filthy, dirty fingertips over the pristine letters and did his best to dry the tears that dripped onto the paper. He read it once, as fast as he could. He read it again, mouthing the words. He read it a third time, out loud, his voice rough from disuse.

The words, despite their bitterness, their pain, their loneliness and their hurt, wrapped around his tired, battered mind like a blanket. They were softer and gentler than anything he had found in this dead world. He breathed them in and out like oxygen, whispered them like wishes to a shooting star, recited them in his mind like prayers.

It was a long time before he dared write in the margins. He didn't want the apocalypse to take this - this untouched, unmarked thing - from him too. But the apocalypse was hungry, and it demanded everything.

It demanded sacrifice.

It was the formula on the 213th page that eventually got him home.

***

He stopped counting the days. Time didn't matter, if you were alone. He didn't have anywhere to be. He didn't have anywhere to go.

The sun rose and the sun set.

Plants began to grow between the cracks in the concrete. A little fern sprouted outside his overhang. He gave a few drops of water, each day. He named it Twenty-Three, and made sure the light always reached it during the day.

It was a spot of green in a world that hadn't held color in many, many months.

~~It wilted two weeks later. He hadn't cried that hard since the days he spent covered in his own siblings' blood.~~

***

He found a teddy bear, once, in the earlier days. It was missing an eye, both ears, and its family.

Five picked it up. The fabric was gritty in his hands. The bear wasn't whole.

He took it back to the overhang with him. Sometimes, if he woke up in a cold sweat, he rubbed its fur. Something soft, somewhat. Something tangible.

He tried not to think about what had happened to its family.

***

The wind howled.

The sky fell.

Fires continued to burn.

He breathed in, lungs thick with ash. He breathed out.

It didn't hurt quite so much, anymore. He could kneel and whisper words at each grave without breaking down. He could press his palms to the cold dirt, could think of his siblings' bodies mere feet below him, could taste their names on his dry tongue without breaking down.

He was older, not quite as weak, not quite as strong.

And one day, when the Commission called upon him, when he finally found his chance to make things right, he took it. He thought of all his murmured promises to dead ears. He thought of the burn in his heart to hold another human being again. He thought of finally  _feeling_ something again.

He thought of loving someone again, and the weight of his gun in his hands was easier to bear.

He loved with fire and blood, didn't he?

**Author's Note:**

> me: crap i miscounted how many siblings he buries  
> me: but i really like how that line turned out :'(  
> my brain @ me: how dare you think five did not bury grace. how dare you. you _fool_


End file.
